The Child and the Old Woman 1967

Vilen Barsky made this painting, "The Child and the Old Woman," with what looks like a whole lot of feeling and some pretty thick oil paint. I get the sense that Barsky was really digging into the process, letting the colors and marks guide the way. Check out the surface of this painting. The blues are so saturated and chunky, you can practically feel them, and then the way the white and pink kind of wrestle with it, to create the figures, it's all about texture and the physicality of the medium. Look at how the blue paint drips down like tears or maybe rain, it's heavy, emotional stuff. It makes me think about the way we carry our histories, and how those histories shape us. This work reminds me of someone like Chaim Soutine, in the way he used paint to explore the darker side of human emotion. Ultimately, art is a conversation, an exchange of ideas. Barsky invites us to bring our own stories and interpretations. It's a space of ambiguity, where multiple meanings can coexist, which is perfect.